Games have come a long way, but its all back to where we started

I often find it funny people's attitude to games and consoles. The recent batch of social and "casual" games has helped widen the benefit and appeal. Just take this typical family gathering.
Years ago people would have gathered around the piano for a sing song. Now... well after years of 1st person shooters, fighting and driving the PS3 has this Singstar.
People often worry about whether they can sing, but it just does not matter if its fun.
Not all games are the same, not all games are violent, though singing final countdown can do some damage on this :-)

Rock and roll xmas party

I just blogged this to a few collegues at work but as I twittered it and the video is on youtube I thought I would also post it here :-)
My fellow evangelist Roo came by the lair last night. Once we had put the world to rights and discussed the past few weeks in particular we got down to being the rock and roll stars that we really are. At the end of the evening I seem to have nearly fallen into the christmas tree, something odd to do with metaxa. Thats by the by though. Here Roo and Mrs Roo do their thing on guitar hero iii and then on Singstar.
As I always say we are not trying to replace the real world with metaverses, but we can use technology to enhance the experience of now.


Enjoy

Singstar Ps3 - Who would have thought it?

Singstar Ps3, originally uploaded by epredator.

A belated 40th present arrived today with Singstar on the PS3 (only 4 months late). I know I am not singer, hence always trying to play guitar as a yoof. However, I have always fancied learning to ding a bit better and the feed back of singstar seemed to be the way.
Mrs Epred and I sparked it up tonight and it turns out she is way better than me on most songs.
We waded through duets on most of the songs that come with it, but the draw of the singstar online store grew too great.
If nothing else to buy Wizard's "I wish it could be christmas everyday" and our soccer anthem "three lions".
The thing was we got there and there were a fair few tunes from our generation. Culture Club, Depeche Mode etc.
I downloaded the 2 Duran Duran songs "Hungry like the wolf" and "Rio".
Having just sung hungry like the wolf it turns out of all the songs and all the styles I appear to be a Simon Le Bon clone :-) I got a pretty decent score, felt in tune (nealry) and seemed to be hitting and holding the right notes.
I am not going to be launching a pop career, though...... no I am not!
I am so looking forward to our UK version of rockband now, being able to combine the guitar and the singing and doing the band thing in a kareoke style.
I used to really not even consider karoike bars back in the 90's but now my performance and ego gene has been enabled I am more than up for giving it a go, after a bit of practice of course.
So atlast an app that makes me want to spark up the PS3. Just get some more songs on that shop Sony!

**Update I just twittered a precise 140 character one saying
"singstar, I am twisted sister, wolfmother, culture club, duran duran and the killers. I am not Robbie Williams or Gwen Stefani (relatively!)"